About Barbara Atkinson

Barbara F. Atkinson, MD, became Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of Kansas Medical Center on Jan. 1, 2005. She also concurrently serves as the Executive Dean of the KU School of Medicine, and was the first woman in the country to hold both positions at a medical center. In her capacity, she oversees the education of 3,000 students, as well as 2,500 faculty and staff and a budget of $225 million.

Dr. Atkinson was born in Minnesota and grew up in North Dakota, Illinois, and Ohio. She received her bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, and earned her medical degree from Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia in 1974. In 1996, she received the Jefferson Medical College Alumni Achievement Award.

Dr. Atkinson is a seasoned academic administrator. She began her career at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, where she was assistant and then associate professor and director of the hospital’s cytopathology laboratory from 1978 to 1987. She served as professor and chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1994 and at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann University from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 1999, she was the Annenberg Dean of the MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine, now Drexel College of Medicine.

Her research has been in the identification and characterization of tumor antigens in cells and tissues and in development of techniques to recognize tumors and tumor types. She has edited seven books and is best known for those on cytopathology and gynecologic pathology, including the Atlas of Cytopathology (1992) and the Atlas of Difficult Diagnosis in Cytopathology (1998), dealing with the diagnosis of diseases based on the appearance of individual cells and groups of cells. In 2003, she completed a second edition of the Atlas of Cytopathology. Dr. Atkinson serves as co-editor in chief of an open access web-based journal, Cytojournal, http://www.cytojournal.com.

Dr. Atkinson was elected as the first female trustee of the American Board of Pathology and is a past president of the organization. She serves as a member of the Administrative Board of the Council of Deans of the Association of American Medical Colleges and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Academic Health Centers. She is also a member of the National Board of Medical Examiners. In 1997, she was elected to membership in the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Atkinson joined the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2000 to lead the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. In 2002, she was named Executive Dean and has led the school’s Kansas City and Wichita campuses since then. As Executive Vice Chancellor, she has made it a priority to seek Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute for the University of Kansas Cancer Center. This was declared by Chancellor Robert Hemenway to be the University’s number one priority in 2005 at the urging of Dr. Atkinson, who has worked tirelessly to advance this cause. She is also committed to growing the Medical Center’s biomedical research enterprise. Dr. Atkinson has a passion for educating students and residents and led the effort for curriculum change for the medical school to ensure students are learning basic and clinical science in the most effective way from those who are on the leading edge of creating new medical knowledge.

Dr. Atkinson believes strongly in mentoring women and expanding the pool of female candidates for leadership positions in academic medicine. She was a founding member and continues to serve on the advisory board of ELAM – the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine Program for Women – the nation’s only in-depth program focused on preparing female faculty at schools of medicine to move into positions of leadership. She also serves as the president of the Foundation of History of Women in Medicine. She is firmly committed to improving cultural diversity and minority enrollment at the Medical Center, and has led efforts to boost scholarship programs for and recruitment of minority students and faculty.

Dr. Atkinson is married to G. William Atkinson, MD, professor in the Department of Medicine at KUMC. He is a pulmonary internist and is practicing in the division of General and Geriatric Medicine. They live in Gardner Lake, Kansas. They have a son and daughter-in-law, George Atkinson and Julie McCollum, and two grandsons, of Independence, Missouri, and a daughter and son-in-law, Nancy and Charles Perkins, of Gardner, Kansas. George is a CPA, Julie works for the VFW, and Nancy and Charles are both chefs at an area restaurant.

The family also includes two Pomeranians, Dorothy and ToTo, and two birds – Buddy, an African Grey parrot, who has a 200-word vocabulary and mimics voices, and Emma, a rose-breasted cockatoo from Australia, who also talks but has a limited vocabulary.

In her spare time, Dr. Atkinson and her husband are avid “birders” who like to spot rare birds while on business trips and occasionally travel to find special species. They have identified more than 500 species in the United States. Dr. Atkinson serves on the Board of Directors of Audubon Society of Kansas. She also enjoys walking, playing the flute, and reading mystery stories.